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Intern report

October 20, 2015

FIDM Museum summer intern Becca Love, a master’s candidate at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, is studying the relationship between high fashion, celebrity, and the department store. Her graduate thesis explores the celebrity status of Bloomingdale's. While at FIDM, she became interested in the history of L.A.'s own Bullock's-Wilshire, a department store that rose to prominence alongside many of the beloved stars of Hollywood’s golden age.

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Opened in 1929 on Wilshire Boulevard, Bullock’s-Wilshire was California’s reply to the New York and Chicago department stores that had dominated American fashion since the late nineteenth century. Fashion on the east coast was heavily influenced by stars of the stage, as reflected in collections by Lucile, Ltd., which regularly designed garments to be worn by famous actresses, on stage and off. These designs were often reproduced in fashion magazines, with variations being sold in leading department stores such as New York’s Macy’s and Chicago’s Marshall Field & Co. By the time Bullock’s-Wilshire opened, cinema had taken the lead in American entertainment, and Hollywood stars represented the ideal in fashion.

Fashion designers became costume designers and costume designers became fashion designers. Bullock’s-Wilshire was the center of commerce for the new silver screen royalty of Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Mae West, and others. Howard Greer began as an assistant at Lucile, Ltd., only to open his own shop designing for the screen as well as for private clients. Travis Banton and Adrian were credited with influencing New York’s fashion elite through their designs for Joan Crawford and Katherine Hepburn. Even Coco Chanel was brought to Hollywood in 1931 to design costumes for Samuel Goldwyn’s production company, a testament to the power movies held over fashion.

SuitIrene for Bullock's-Wilshire1950Study Collection85.25

Designer Irene Lentz Gibbons (1900-1962), professionally known as simply "Irene," started her career in fashion, moved on to costumes, and then became one of the first people to operate an in-store boutique at Bullock’s-Wilshire, where celebrities shopped for high fashion. Called Irene, the boutique opened in 1935 and remained in operation until Irene left to become the head designer at MGM in 1942. There was significant overlap in terms of who wore Irene’s designs on screen and who wore Irene off screen. Doris Day, Vivien Leigh, and Ginger Rogers came to Bullock’s-Wilshire to shop at Irene, adding to the department store’s already glamorous reputation.

Detail of 85.25

The FIDM Museum has several beautiful garments from the Irene boutique at Bullock’s-Wilshire, as well as pieces from her earlier fashion line and costume and sketches she later made for MGM, including an exceptional gown Marlene Dietrich wore on and off screen.

Many costumes have multiple accessories, such as these hair-trimmed gloves from the WGN show Salem.

The first step in the process of installing such an exhibition is creating condition reports for all the costumes that are being loaned to the museum by the various television shows. Condition reports are exactly what they sound like: reports on the condition of each garment. However, in such a large exhibition, with so many different pieces from so many different places, the reports must be incredibly meticulous, detailing the way the shipment arrived from the studio, the packaging used, and the individual items in the packages. From elaborate gowns to tiny little tie pins, each piece of a costume must be accounted for, documented, photographed, and prepared for installation. The FIDM Museum is responsible for returning everything as close as possible to how it arrived. This is not only out of respect for the elaborate costumes, but for also the individual costume designers and studios that have very kindly loaned their items for display.

Measuring garments as part of condition reporting determines the size of mannequin to be used.

The next step in the process is deciding which costumes from each show will be chosen for the exhibition. Fortunately, Guest Curator Mary Rose made those tough decisions! Museum staff then faced the difficult task of choosing the best mannequin for each costume. Dressing a mannequin for an exhibition is not as easy as dressing a mannequin for a display in a retail shop, as most of the mannequins need some unseen physical alteration or adjustment to better support the garment. In an exhibition, the garment is not altered for the mannequin; instead, the mannequin is molded to fit the clothing.

Costumes from a variety of shows are prepped for the curator to decide which will be included in the exhibition.

A mannequin is first prepped with pantyhose: one pair for the legs and another pair, the legs cut off, over the head. This not only protects the garments from rubbing against the mannequin and becoming damaged, but also provides a good base for any padding that may be required. Because many of the costumes are from period pieces, or tailored to a specific body shape, padding is incredibly important. It might include archival bunting pinned to the pantyhose or stuffing beneath the hose. Filling out a mannequin makes the body types look realistic and communicates the character-driven aspects of the exhibition.

Mannequins dressed in the beautiful costumes from the PBS/BBC Tudor-era drama Wolf Hall wait to be spiked to the platform.

After many hours of dressing and rearranging the mannequins, their final places are chosen. The mannequins are spiked into wooden platforms to keep them from moving or tipping, and the platforms are cleaned and touched up before the exhibition opens to the public. It is truly amazing to start a project in an empty gallery and finish with beautifully dressed costumes on display!

March 31, 2015

Marley Healy is a recent graduate of the MA program in Fashion Curation at the London College of Fashion. While in London, Marley worked on a variety of curatorial projects including exhibitions with the Rambert ballet company archive, the University of the Arts London, and Savage Beauty at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Originally from Southern California, Marley returned from London to finish her dissertation and spent the fall interning at the FIDM Museum.

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During the final months of my graduate program, as I engaged in the vicious cycle of writing, editing, and rewriting my dissertation, I was fortunate to have the best distraction possible. I had the pleasure of working with the brilliant staff of the FIDM Museum, assisting with various curatorial projects that often allowed me to intimately handle dress objects and practice good old-fashioned research methods. Serendipitously, my dissertation research on late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century women’s sportswear followed a parallel research trajectory to that of a future exhibition being planned by FIDM Museum staff, affording me the unique opportunity of conducting mutually beneficial research.

An important rung on the research ladder is the consultation of primary sources, and what better source for fashion and dress than a fashion magazine? Contemporary magazines illuminate a hodge-podge of era-specific preoccupations that give insight into the unique socio-cultural makeup of the people who read them. Having worked with magazine archives extensively (American Vogue is a favorite go-to) I was delighted to have the opportunity to utilize the FIDM Museum’s collection of La Mode Illustrée, a French fashion periodical that came into circulation during the mid-nineteenth century.

As its title suggests, La Mode Illustrée was dedicated to the dissemination of fashionable garments and accessories, but its concept of “fashion” extended far beyond objects of personal adornment. Stipulated underneath the scrolling title were the words “Journal de la Famille,” a reminder that the magazine’s content reinforced suitable feminine ideals. Embroidery patterns, serialized short stories, and other miscellaneous, family-themed editorial content fleshed out the publication’s pages.

The FIDM Museum’s collection spans 1869 through 1911, a time frame that was conveniently significant to my dissertation. I spent hours poring over the slightly foxed and occasionally torn pages. While most people might find carefully turning page by singular page a tedious affair, I relished the careful attention I was able to pay to each of them individually. My focus was directed towards locating fashion illustrations of “sportswear” in its most literal sense.

Dozens of fashion plates showed ensembles for seemingly every possible activity in which one could engage. Wedding gowns, travelling outfits, and even fancy dress costumes broke up the monotony of typical day and evening garments that were necessary elements of the publication, but the illustrations of sportswear for outdoor activities were by far the most interesting.

Season to season, La Mode Illustrée showed sportswear and activities that harmonized with the weather. For example, throughout the spring and summer, young ladies are depicted frolicking at the beach in bathing attire; in the fall, they promenade through tree-lined parks. Conversely, fur trims and heavy layers keep out the cold for ladies shown skating and sledding through the snowy months of winter.

Ensembles for the more daring sportswomen who engaged in horseback riding and hunting are sprinkled through the various issues. These images offer a myriad of details regarding styling, fit, and even sport-specific accessories. These valuable points of reference will inspire the styling of the FIDM Museum’s planned sportswear exhibition.

My time at the FIDM Museum reinforced my passion for the art of fashion curation and I appreciate the wonderful museum staffers who patiently answered my questions and encouraged me throughout the process of completing my dissertation. Overall, the internship experience was a joyful undertaking and I look forward to collaborating with the FIDM Museum in the future!

August 26, 2014

The interns are on a roll! Last week, we featured intern Rachel Panella's post on working with our extensive collection of Versace menswear. Today, intern Soquel Filice, who also spent her summer working with the Versace Menswear Archive, sheds light on a different aspect of collection research: documenting and dating garments. Thanks for these great tips, Soquel!

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“His clothes are often skin tight, low cut, slit high and siren bright. He was among the first to revive the cat suit, to bring back the mini skirt, to show tights worn as pants, and bring out the bustier at night and bead it.”1

Italian designer Gianni Versace left a bold mark on the fashion world with his overtly sexual designs and mixing of prints and fabrics. Versace even said himself, “I think life is nice if you mix everything up.”2 Not only did Versace leave a mark on the world of fashion when he died in 1997, he left a design legacy and a peek into the history of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This summer, I have had the privilege to gain insight into the life and legacy of Versace through processing the Gianni Versace Menswear Archive at FIDM Museum alongside another intern, Rachel Panella.

We were tasked with cataloging, dating, rehousing, describing, and completing an inventory for every piece of this beautiful 1300 piece collection worn by the late Marvin Worth. After Rachel completed her internship, I was assigned with dating each piece in the collection. Although this is my first time dating garments, there are many resources out there that helped me and can help anyone accomplish this task.

An easy way to narrow down the decade that different garments were made in and give context to a collection is the website http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp. This website (recommended by the lovely Rachel Panella) has pictures and dates of registered patents and trademarks for different designers, so it is easy to do a basic search for Versace in the Trademark Electronic Search System or TESS to find different labels that are on a majority of garments in the collection. TESS helped me to narrow down which garments are from the 1980s and which are from the 1990s.

Screenshot from the TESS website.

By far the most helpful tool in dating a vintage collection is having original catalogs from the time period being researched. I was fortunate to have access to Versace menswear catalogs from 1982-1996 in order to research this collection. I found dates for most garments by looking at these catalogs and matching them to the pictures and descriptions that are located in the Museum’s Past Perfect database. Looking for patterns and trends that stand out for each fashion season is an easy way to date garments in a collection. One example from the Versace collection is the Tarzan print themed shirt from the Spring/Summer 1993 catalog. Just by glancing at the pattern and flipping through one of the catalogs, I was easily able to find a date for shirt (pictured below).

Another way to date a vintage garment collection is to use an online database such as Pro Quest Historical Newspapers or the Vogue Archive to look through old advertisements. This was a challenging task for the Versace Archive because the collection I am working with is solely menswear, and Vogue is a womenswear magazine. I did not find it as helpful as I wanted it to be, but I was able to recognize trends in womenswear during different years that helped me to date menswear pieces from the same year. I found a Vogue cover shoot of model Linda Florentino wearing a Versace white butterfly patterned dress from Spring/Summer 1995 and immediately knew that a shirt, tie, and vest in the Versace Menswear Archive dated from that year. Additionally, Elizabeth Hurley’s iconic safety pin dress from the Spring/Summer 1994 collection revealed to me that the white and black safety pin suit jackets in the FIDM Museum collection were from that same year.

April 1995 Vogue cover with model Kristen McMenamy wearing a Versace butterfly print dress. On the right is a Versace man's vest with a similar print (Vest, Gianni Versace, Italy, Spring/ Summer 1995, V2006.890.253, Gift of Joan Worth in memory of Marvin Worth).

I could go on and on about all of the different strategies I used to date the Versace Menswear Archive, but for the sake of brevity I will conclude with one last tip: try everything and do your research! Databases, print catalogs, and good old fashioned library books will aid any researcher if he/she knows how to use them and is persistent about trying multiple methods to accomplish a task. When in doubt, ask a librarian for help. Good luck and happy dating!

August 22, 2014

We're so fortunate to work with talented, curious, and motivated interns! Today's post, by intern Rachel Panella, dives into a unique area of our collection: the Gianni Versace Menswear Archive. Consisting of donor Marvin Worth's extensive Versace wardrobe, the Archive offers an incredible overview of the designer's work. During her time with us, Rachel formulated some thoughtful suggestions regarding how we can effectively exhibit this unique archive. Thanks for your insight Rachel!

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“Versace, Worth admits, is one of his obsessions.”1

Hollywood producer Marvin Worth (1925–1998) was not only well known for his movies, such as Malcolm X (1992), Lenny (1974), and Gia (1998), but also for his eccentric style. Several years after his death, the FIDM Museum gained possession of his complete closet of over 1300 pieces featuring over 100 pairs of shoes, 200 shirts, 80 suits, and 140 pairs of pants. My job this summer was to work in conjunction with another intern, Soquel Filice, to organize this archive. As I am currently finishing up my Master's degree in Information Science, I have been intimately acquainted with archives, but this internship provided me with a unique opportunity to work with an archival collection within a museum setting, which I personally feel comes with a different mission and needs. Unlike an archive, which tends to focus on the donor or creator of the collection as a whole, the museum tends to focus on the individual artifacts themselves. This collection seems to have two possible points of focus: the collector, Marvin Worth, or the designer, Gianni Versace (1946-1997), and a focus on either could make for an interesting show. While working with the Versace Collection, I have thought of four very different ways to display these garments, each with varying focus on the archival aspect of the collection.

Directly after Worth's death in 1998, his closet was closed and not opened again for almost 15 years. The closet became a time capsule, an actual frozen moment in time and essentially the perfect archive. Rather than the typical collections that come in trash bags and boxes with an indecipherable original order, this collection had a clear original order. One could simply recreate Worth’s closet, thus recreating a moment in time and an archeological place of study. This method of exhibition is comparable to archeological exhibitions, and even more interestingly, decorative furniture exhibitions, both of which recreate the context in which the object was originally found. This is one way the collection could be utilized—as a way to better understand Marvin Worth and his personal organization system.

Another way to keep the focus on the donor would be to recreate the actual outfits that we know Worth wore as seen in the following photos. This would be an easy way to exhibit these garments and better understand the collector. Through this method, Marvin Worth's personal curation of his clothing and self can be seen and the clothes become anthropological artifacts. These two options are often utilized in an archival atmosphere where the focus is on the donor or collector.

To call Worth a collector of Versace is to put it mildly. Over 95% of this vast collection is Versace, but what makes this archival collection unique compared to other archives is that it is a story not only of one man, but two: Marvin Worth and Gianni Versace. Through the avid collecting of Marvin Worth, we are able to see the entire expanse of Versace's career with pieces dating from the early 1980s until his death in 1997. Anyone can come in and see the evolution of this designer's work. One idea would be to focus on a particular type of garment, such as a suit, and exhibit different suits from the course of Versace's career, effectively creating a timeline of Versace's career and the evolution of his aesthetic over time.

The Museum also owns a collection of Versace catalogs, which have been a great resource these past weeks and I believe, will be a great resource for future exhibitions. One way to utilize these catalogs would be to exhibit the garments as seen in the catalogs. The catalogs are highly stylized and are the resource to not only understand Versace as a creator of clothing, but also a curator.

My work with this collection has challenged me to think of the function of both individual artifacts and collections as a whole in the museum. What does it mean to be part of an archival collection within a museum, how does it differ from other collections? To understand this, we first must understand the goals of the collection and the institution itself. These proposals function as a way to think more deeply about these goals and what sets this apart from the objects in permanent storage. I, for one, think that this collection demands to be thought of as more than simple aesthetics, leading us to ask, “How can we make these objects talk and once we get them talking, what do we actually want them to say?”

December 31, 2013

Our most popular blog post of 2013 examines a clever Victorian accessory: the skirt lifter. Researched and written by summer intern Joanna Abijaoude, the post explores skirt lifters from a variety of perspectives. Thanks to Joanna for sharing her research on this object!

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Today's post was researched and written by FIDM Museum's summer intern Joanna Abijaoude. Over the past several weeks, Joanna has assisted with multiple projects, including digitizing ephemera from The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection and compiling research for an upcoming exhibition. Joanna is a 2014 M.A. candidate in the Visual Culture: Costume Studies M.A. program at New York University. In preparation for her thesis, she is researching Hollywood costume and 20th century designer Walter Plunkett. During her internship, Joanna became interested in skirt lifters, a distinctly Victorian accessory. In today's post, she explores the function, aesthetics, and cultural implications of a c. 1876 butterfly-motif skirt lifter in our collection.

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Though the Victorian era is well known for its ingenious inventions, this week I was introduced to a particularly clever gadget in the FIDM Museum’s Collection that served a practical sartorial purpose: the skirt lifter.

Skirt Lifterc. 1876Museum Purchase2007.5.18

A skirt lifter resembles a pair of small tongs, or scissors with padded circular discs instead of blades. The Museum’s example is brass and features a decorative butterfly that sits in between the handles. A small ring at the top would have held a cord, ribbon, or chain to suspend the tool just below the waist. Modern historians refer to the object as a “skirt lifter,” while period sources predominately use the term “dress holder.” When I initially encountered this object, several questions immediately came to mind: how was the dress holder incorporated into an ensemble and what occasions demanded its use? Did all classes of women utilize it? Why was the butterfly a popular decorative motif for this accessory?

October 03, 2013

We love our interns and volunteers! We've worked with many wonderful interns and volunteers, and the intern featured in today's post is no exception. Joanna Abijaoude, who wrote a great post on a Victorian skirt lifter, recently completed a summer internship at the FIDM Museum. Currently in her final year of an M.A. program at New York University, Joanna is researching 20th century Hollywood costume designer Walter Plunkett for her thesis. Joanna has also interned in the costume departments of the Phoenix Art Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She recently began a collections internship in The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Thanks for all your hard work Joanna! We look forward to seeing where your career takes you.

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When you combine a talented staff with a world-renowned fashion
collection, there are no limits to the dynamic projects that result. I was lucky enough to witness this first-hand as a FIDM
Museum & Galleries intern, a role which taught me so much about the hard
work, creativity, and passion involved in developing a successful fashion
collection and museum. The team was in the midst of a myriad of projects when I
began this summer – from preparing to send “Modern Love: Fashion Visionaries from the FIDM Museum
LA” to Bendigo, Australia, to mounting “Gatsby’s Women: 1920s Evening Dress from the Helen
Larson Historic Fashion Collection”
in the FIDM LA gallery, each day brought a new
task, giving me a truly exciting internship experience.

One of my main
assignments was to digitize the ephemera in the Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection. This astounding collection of approximately 1,200 fashion
objects dating from c. 1600 to the 1940s belonged to Helen Larson, a
Californian who acquired exquisite historic clothing over fifty years beginning
in 1948. Her pieces range from a rare seventeenth-century velvet jerkin to
elaborate gowns worn at the most prominent courts in Europe. The FIDM Museum is
now fundraising to purchase the collection in its entirety, and in the meantime
they house and exhibit it, increasing its profile and introducing the public to
this important piece of history.